An oak tree snapped from its trunk at Lake Sammamish State Park around 9 p.m. Sunday, crushing several cars in the parking lot. No major injuries were reported from the incident.
The exact cause remains a mystery as cleanup crews continue to work at the scene.
This type of incident is considered very uncommon by park officials, who told KIRO 7 that crews regularly limb trees to maintain their health.
Emergency responders faced challenges reaching the scene due to crowds.
Pat Imboden, a battalion chief with Eastside Fire & Rescue, described the difficulty.
“I had to use my siren just to try to clear the path,” said Imboden “It was a good chunk of, you know, probably 200 feet of getting through people before I could even see, like, what the extent of the problem was.”
A similar issue impacted fire crews at the same park a week earlier, after a 15-year-old girl drowned in Lake Sammamish.
Illegally parked cars made it difficult for crews to get in and out of the park during that incident.
“We have to get back in service for all the other calls that are happening and they just couldn’t get out, they were literally just trapped inside the park,” Imboden said.
Alexei Dunayev, a visitor to Lake Sammamish, said he comes to the park about once a month in the summer. Dunayev noted that spotting illegally parked cars is not uncommon, especially as the parking lot gets busy in the afternoon.
“By about two or three o’clock in the afternoon it gets so busy that you end up seeing people double park,” he said.
Kevin Goodrich, Washington State Parks Region Manager for the Northwest Region said park officials had not previously been aware of EMS access problems.
“This is the first we’ve been hearing that there was an access issue for EMS, so I think the first thing I’ll do is reach out to them,” Goodrich said.
He added that if cars block an emergency lane or an area they should not be in, park staff can have them towed or cited.
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